Sunday, September 28, 2008

Hurricane IKE: Our Aftermath.

Hello everyone! I hope this finds you all doing well. I hope you all have power and are getting your lives back to "normal". If you are like me I am still scratching me head and trying to figure it all out. Like where did Sept. go? We lost two weeks. Huh? Just trying to figure out what day of the week or the actual date is hard. Still. Phew. Also, two days after I got power I was still in survival mode. I took my cooler to the store. Habit? Already? I had power and forgot. Took my cooler to H.E.B. to fill up with ice. Which yes, I bought that, too. Even though our fridge was up and running. Ha.

Speaking of power. We got our power back on day 12, which was Wed. I was at Chuy's for dinner when the calls came in telling me. Yay! I cried. Seriously. I was so relived. Yes! Being without power was tough after about day 9. The heat cranked up. The week after IKE when the weather was nice was OK and I did fine. But add in some heat and forget it.

I am happy to report that everyone in our immediate and extended families are all safe and sound. Our homes all had some debris. We had two HUGE pine trees fall on our fence in two places and into the yards of our neighbors. What a mess! My mom and dad had their fence come down in several places. My parents in-law (Kevin's mom and dad) have some damage to their home. They had a neighbor's tree fall on and come through their roof causing some water and constructional damage. My cousin Diane, from Seabrook, lost her home. It is very sad for me to even say it out loud. Her home is gone. The home that me and all my cousins would congregate to for all our family parties and get togethers, the place where we made a gazillion memories. Its gone. Thankfully we still have each other and our memories!!

So, yes. We hunkered down. Slept in our master bedroom closet. The four of us and our dog. It was scary to me, the storm. I am thankful the boys slept through the whole thing. I was so scared. We lost power at 1:30 a.m. The next day, when it was over. I hated that I could not get a hold of anyone by phone to check on everybody. Ugh. It was not so bad for us. As I know like my cousin, Diane, a lot of people lost so much more than just power. I will continue to pray for those who have lost homes and even loved ones in this horrible hurricane.

*During the days in the dark I started an IKE journal. So, I am going to share all the entries with ya. I was blogging even when I couldn't, ha! So, my next few blogs will probably be all IKE related. Now, here are a few pics of "our aftermath".

The boys thought sleeping in the closet was fun.

Day 1: We have an electric stove top. So, Kevin broke out the propane camping stove. Here he is cooking bacon and eggs.

One of two trees that fell in our yard.

Our yard. What a mess!!

One of two piles of debris we had. Our neighbor, Renae Carr, came and hauled off both our piles. Thanks Renae!!